A jury in Colorado (USA) declared police officer Randy Roedema this Thursday guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death in 2019 of Elijah McClaina 23-year-old black man who died after being roughly restrained and injected with the sedative ketamine.

Aurora officers Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt were tried in the first of three trials in McClain’s death. In total, three police officers and two paramedics have been charged with McClain’s death. Prosecutors argued throughout the trial that the officers unnecessarily mistreated McClain when they stopped him and that they gave false information, which contributed to the paramedics administering a large dose of ketamine.

Lawyers for the defendants argued during the trial that it was ketamine that killed McClain and that the doctors were solely responsible. A revised autopsy report in September 2022 concluded that McClain died from “complications from the administration of ketamine following a forced containment“.

It all happened when in 2019 a neighbor called the police to report that McClain was acting suspiciously while walking home in the Denver suburb of Aurora. McClain, according to recordings obtained during the investigation, was held by the arms, placed against a wall and then placed on the ground using a control technique known asor “carotid restriction”which blocks blood flow to the brain and can cause a brief period of unconsciousness.

After, The health workers injected the young man with ketamine, who was already handcuffed then. The prosecution said they did not check his vital signs or monitor McClain properly after administering the drug. The young man was taken unconscious to a hospital, where life support was removed and died on August 30, 2019.